Buy a Logical Clock
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Bad things can happen when vampires get to a certain age. Totally weird. Rated T for safety, some blood and gore.


**Warning:** Spoilerish up to and including Bloodlust. Some gore, some blood, and some vague inferences of an "OMG EWW!" nature. Smatterings of language.  
**Summary:** Bad things can happen when vampires get to a certain age. Not as sick as it sounds. Maybe. Might be funny. Might be sad. Totally weird.  
**Disclaimer:** Definitely _not mine._ Where is this whacky crap coming from, and why won't it leave me alone??

**Buy a Logical Clock**  
_by CaffieneKitty_  
- - -

"Lenore, we have a... slight problem." Orville sounded very unusual on the cell phone.

"How slight?" she said, glancing at Eli, who was driving the truck.

"Uh... Best you come home and hear it straight from Rob."

_Oh, god. Rob._ Lenore flipped her phone shut. "Turn around, we need to take care of something back home."

"What is it?" Eli muttered.

She sighed. "Rob."

"Again? What's he done now?"

"Orville wouldn't say."

Eli grimaced and turned the truck around. "This better not be more trained bats."

- - -

In the abandoned farmhouse they'd picked up cheap, Rob's feet dangled twelve inches above the carpet. Eli held him up against the wall by the throat. Orville had vacated the house as soon as Lenore and Eli had turned up, muttering something about errands in town, back by dawn, and pulling his hat down as low as he could get it.

"You did _what?_" Eli shouted at the dangling Rob, who made slight gacking noises due to the grip on his throat.

Lenore crossed her arms. "Let him down so he can explain himself, Eli."

Her mate grunted belligerently, "This could expose us, Lenore."

"Yeah, well, it's done, so we're just going to have to deal with it and try to keep the worst from happening. Put him down."

Eli dropped Rob and walked to the far side of the room, glaring.

"Thanks Lenore." gasped Rob.

"Oh, don't thank me. I've only just started on you." Rob's eyes slipped toward the floor. "You turned a cow into a vampire?"

"Um. Yeah."

"You're _sure_ you turned a cow?"

"I, well... yeah."

"How?" Eli roared, hands flexing like he still wanted to reach across the room and choke someone.

At the uncomfortable nervous half-grin on Rob's face as he opened his mouth to explain, Lenore held up a hand. "Never mind, I don't think we _really_ want to know."

"What the hell were you thinking, Rob?" Eli yelled across the room.

"Dunno, she just looked..." Rob trailed off helplessly, at a loss for words. "...interesting." He finished in a horrified and slightly desperate tone. Eli snorted in disgust.

Lenore pinched the bridge of her nose. "Where?"

- - -

It would have been a peaceful bucolic scene. A small herd of cows dozed in the moonlight, clustered around a cluster of aspen trees. A light breeze stirred the leaves, and cows huffed, grunted and occasionally chewed cud in their sleep. Except for one cow, with eyes that reflected the truck's headlights in a far too familiar way, and a crust of blood on her chin.

Eli parked the truck and they all walked towards the split-rail fence. "I can't believe you turned a _cow,_ Rob! I thought you'd hit bottom with the bats." Eli unclipped the retaining strap on the machete scabbard he carried.

The cow in question turned away from staring at the group of them and began frisking around a few of the more isolated members of the herd, bounding around them like a calf.

"Really, I don't know what came over me, I only-"

"This is in serious danger of exposing us!" Eli snapped. "We just came here, just got away from a bunch of hunters and now we've got a goddamn blood-sucking cow on the loose!" He gestured at the animal, which had woken up another member of the herd and was gamboling around it playfully, leading it away from the others.

"-I'm sorry! I couldn't help it!" Rob's eyes were riveted on the cows. "I don't know why I did it, maybe I'm... sick or crazy or-"

Lenore cleared her throat. "After a person has been a vampire for a certain length of time, they sometimes get an overwhelming need to make a new vampire." She looked at the two of them as they looked back, a little wide-eyed. "It's the way things are, sometimes." She folded her arms.

"But not a, a cow-pire!" Eli snarled.

Lenore shrugged. "New vampires come from prey. Our prey is... bovine."

"Yet another reason why this whole cow concept is revolting," Eli muttered.

The three of them watched the vampiric cow cavort around her herd mate, then shoulder into the other cow's side suddenly and bite. The brief agonized moo didn't even disturb the rest of the sleeping herd before the sound truncated wetly.

"Oh that is just _so_ wrong." Rob gaped at the splattery scene as the vampire cow feasted.

"More than you know," Lenore said quietly. "She'll work her way through the entire herd in a day or two, if she's not stopped. Go after humans too, anything with a pulse. She can't reason, all she is is thirst." Eli looked sidelong at his mate, who stared blandly at the scene of pastoral carnage.

"Think they'll write it off as a case of mad cow?" Rob asked nervously.

"I doubt it," said Lenore.

Eli slipped the machete out of the scabbard and held it hilt-first towards Rob. "You caused this, you fix it. We can't leave a trail of vampiric cows, the hunters will be all over that."

"What about the Winche-"

"Don't even go there," snarled Eli.

"But-" Rob gesticulated.

"No. This is our mess, we'll clean it up," said Lenore.

"Or more accurately, you'll clean it up" said Eli as he smacked the hilt of the machete into Rob's gesturing hand.

"But... she's mine... I made her." Rob said, quiet and sad, looking down at the blade. "Can't we just-"

"No," said Eli.

"But what-"

"No," said Lenore

"A mascot-"

"_No!_" Eli slapped himself in the forehead and ran a hand down his face before turning away. "I'm waiting in the truck," he grumbled, stomping off toward the vehicle, "I don't care who does it, just deal with it."

Lenore looked back at the truck as Eli slammed the door. She turned back to Rob. He was fingering the machete and watching the cow feed, looking miserable. She put a hand on his shoulder. "It's best if you get it over with quickly, Rob. When we get back home, we'll be packing up. Remember," she gestured at cow chowing down on her herd mate, blood streaming down her chin, eyes glazed, "... and never do this again."

Rob sighed, and hefted the machete. "Yes, Lenore," he said and headed over the fence.

- - -  
(end)

A/N (afterlog): Arright, it's five thirty AM and I'm _still_ not gone to bed because I'm writing daft shite about a BLOOD-SUCKING COW! The hell?


End file.
